I’ve Been Building Money For My Beer Since 2019. Here’s What I’ve Learned

In September 2019, I started a website with a pretty straightforward idea.

I wanted to find legitimate ways to make a little extra money online.

I called it Money For My Beer.

The name was intentionally a little silly. The idea wasn't to get rich. It was about finding practical opportunities that could give you a bit of extra breathing room. Maybe enough for dinner, a weekend trip, a hobby, or, yes, a cold beer after a long week.

Six years later, the site has become something quite different from what I originally imagined.

Money For My Beer is still about money and side hustles, but it has gradually grown into a place where I research and write about technology, business, SEO, security, reviews, travel, gardening, beer, and practical how-to topics.

And because I'm a developer and technical architect by profession, I’ve realized that running the website itself has become almost as interesting to me as writing for it.

From a Side-Hustle Blog to Something Bigger

The original concept was simple.

Find an opportunity.

Try to understand it.

Explain it.

Help someone decide whether it might actually be worth their time.

That philosophy is still there, but my interests expanded.

I started writing about things I was already curious about. Technology. Websites. SEO. Security. Business ideas. Practical problems. Things I had learned myself. Things I wanted to understand better.

Eventually, Money For My Beer became less about one narrow topic and more about useful information from the perspective of someone who likes figuring things out.

That change wasn't planned as some grand content strategy.

It happened naturally.

And I think that's one of the most interesting things about running a website for years. You can start with one idea and discover that the project becomes something completely different along the way.

I'm Not an Expert on Everything

One thing I've become more conscious of over the years is the difference between writing about something and actually being an expert in it.

I'm a technical architect. I work with software, apps, websites, and digital systems. Those are areas where I have professional experience.

That doesn't mean I automatically know everything about investing, taxes, cybersecurity, gardening, travel, or every other subject that might appear on the site.

So my role is often less about saying, "I'm the expert," and more about saying:

Here's what I found. Here's what the reliable sources say. Here's how I understand it. And here's what you should probably verify for yourself.

For topics where accuracy matters, I try to use authoritative sources, distinguish facts from opinions, and update articles when information changes.

That's especially important when you're publishing anything involving money, security, products, services, or technology.

SEO Changed How I Think About Content

Running Money For My Beer has also given me a completely different appreciation for SEO.

It's one thing to read an SEO guide.

It's another thing to publish hundreds of pages and then watch how real people discover them.

I spend a lot of time looking at Google Search Console, search queries, impressions, clicks, click-through rates, indexing, internal links, titles, descriptions, and the overall structure of the website.

Google's own documentation emphasizes creating helpful, reliable, people-first content rather than producing pages primarily to manipulate search rankings.

That's something I've increasingly tried to take seriously.

Search Console is particularly useful because it lets me see what people actually search for and which pages Google is showing them.

And sometimes the search data tells you something completely different from what you expected.

That's one of my favorite parts.

You publish something thinking people will find it through one topic, and months later you discover that they're finding it through a completely different question.

That becomes another opportunity to improve the article.

The Hard Part Isn't Always Writing

Writing an article is relatively straightforward.

Maintaining a website isn't.

Over time, you accumulate:

• old articles
• outdated information
• weak pages
• duplicate topics
• messy categories
• broken links
• unnecessary pages
• outdated internal links
• URLs that no longer make sense
• content that seemed useful five years ago but isn't anymore

Eventually, you have to decide what deserves to stay.

I've spent a significant amount of time cleaning up Money For My Beer rather than simply publishing more.

I've reorganized categories, improved internal linking, rewritten older content, updated important pages, reviewed site policies, and tried to make the overall website easier to understand.

It's not particularly glamorous work.

There isn't a screenshot you can post on Twitter showing how exciting a better category structure is.

But it's part of building a website that you actually intend to keep around.

The Website Is Also a Technical Project

Because I come from a development background, I naturally end up looking at the site as more than just a collection of articles.

There is the WordPress side.

There is performance.

There is indexing.

There are redirects and canonical URLs.

There is HTTPS and security.

There are structured pages, categories, internal links, metadata, and the XML sitemap.

There is also the slightly less glamorous part of making sure everything still works after changing something.

A content website might look simple from the outside.

Underneath, there are plenty of systems to maintain.

And that's one reason I still enjoy working on it.

It gives me a place to experiment with ideas outside of my day job.

I Also Don't Want It to Become a Content Factory

This is probably one of the biggest lessons I've learned.

It is incredibly easy to look at SEO and think:

I need more articles.

Then you publish another article.

Then another.

Then another.

Eventually you have hundreds of pages, but not necessarily a better website.

I've become much more interested in making existing content better.

Can an old article answer the question more clearly?

Can two related pages be connected with better internal links?

Can I remove something outdated?

Can I explain a complicated concept in simpler language?

Can I add useful context instead of just repeating information that already exists everywhere else?

Those questions are much more interesting to me than simply trying to hit a publishing quota.

Why the Name Still Works

The funny thing is that the name Money For My Beer still makes sense to me.

Not because the website is literally about beer money anymore.

The beer is really the metaphor.

It's about finding useful opportunities, learning something, making something, or solving a problem that makes everyday life a little better.

Sometimes that means learning about a side hustle.

Sometimes it's understanding a technology problem.

Sometimes it's figuring out SEO.

Sometimes it's researching a product.

Sometimes it's just reading about something interesting.

The subject can change.

The underlying idea doesn't have to.

Building Something That Outlives the Original Idea

When I started Money For My Beer in 2019, I wasn't trying to build a huge media company.

I wanted a place to publish things I found useful.

Years later, I'm still doing that.

The website has changed.

The topics have changed.

My approach to SEO has changed.

My approach to research has changed.

Even the way I think about what makes a good article has changed.

But the core reason I keep working on it is surprisingly similar to when I started.

I like building things.

I like researching things.

I like figuring out how things work.

And I like taking something complicated and turning it into something another person can actually understand.

That's probably the most accurate description of Money For My Beer today.

It isn't just a blog about making extra money.

It's a long-running side project where I get to follow my curiosity and share what I learn.

What's Next?

I don't have some giant five-year publishing plan.

I'll probably keep improving the site, cleaning up older content, experimenting with SEO, writing about things that interest me, and occasionally following a completely unexpected rabbit hole.

That's part of the fun.

For now, you can see what I'm working on at Money For My Beer, read the story behind the site, or explore some of the newer guides and experiments.

And if you're also building a small website, side project, blog, or weird little internet business of your own, I'd genuinely be interested in hearing about it.

Sometimes the projects that start as "I'll just try this" end up sticking around much longer than expected.

Cheers.
Ryan